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PrintThe Last Word: Who's the boss?
Slowly, incrementally, I came to a recent realization: Our 6-year-old son has become our boss.
First of all, he wakes up before the rest of us. Always has. Whether he stays up late with friends, running around the back yard for hours, or falls asleep before the sun sets, he gets up at sunrise and, in the summer, often before sunrise.
And when he’s up, he expects the rest of us to get up. He usually wanders into our room, tries to politely make just enough of a disturbance to wake everyone else, then heads to his sister’s room, where he often administers a more direct appeal: “ZuZu, get up. ZuZu. Get. Up.”
I remember a time when we used to implore him to go back to bed, but that seems to have dissipated somehow.
Apparently, he’s won, outlasted us, which is his true skill. Simple persistence. I was stunned the other morning when he woke early (occasionally, I manage to get up before him) and the first thing he felt he needed to do was wander into his sister’s room and tell her she needed to clean her room. He was still rubbing sleep out of his eyes. Who does that? I thought to myself, worrying, of course, that I do that and he’s merely mimicking his tyrannical, overbearing father.
But that’s the part of parenting I hate the most: the hectoring, the admonishments. I’d give anything to, you know, just be cool, and I would hate for him to get in the habit of enjoying the worst part of parenting.
Another of his tactics is to employ a kind of cloak-and-dagger diplomacy when trying to move events in a direction that he feels best works to his advantage. We eat at home most nights, but toward the end of the week, because of general fatigue, there’s usually some wiggle room. If he doesn’t like whatever’s planned for dinner at home, he swiftly springs into action.
Imagine a legal drama where a tiny Matt Damon makes sure to isolate his parties as he sets about the work of bringing them to a mutually satisfying agreement. He will say, for example, “DaDa (I know, it’s tough to picture, but this is verbatim), DaDa, do you have any plans for dinner?” This means, have I planned to fix anything for dinner? To this I might answer, “No, I don’t, buddy. Why don’t you ask your mother what she thinks.” This means, I hope she’s fixing dinner because I’m not.
But before he approaches my wife, he wants to get me on the record. He’ll follow up with, “So you don’t know what we’re having for dinner?” I shake my head no. “So do you care if we go out for dinner?” Again, as stated above, if it’s late in the week, I’ll probably shake my head no.
Having satisfied himself, he will then move to the next room and triumphantly announce, “DaDa wants to go out to dinner. Is that OK with you, Mama?”
Win-win, or at least, win. And none of his maneuverings would stand out necessarily if it weren’t for the wildly different ways he approaches a situation from his sister. If faced with a similar problem, she would plead her case, whine a little and maybe produce a tear or two, but it never occurs to her to proceed with such precision-like divide-and-conquer subterfuge.
She is an open book, her heart on her sleeve, every single emotion flitting across her perfect little face. He, on the other hand, never makes a move without already knowing how to counter, bob and weave, calmly and coolly ready with a follow-up line of logic.
You would think it would follow, therefore, that he is the bold and adventurous one. But he’s not. She is, ready to leap into almost any event or situation whether she’s overmatched or completely out of her depth. He, on the other hand, needs to observe, get his bearings and then slowly, methodically plan his approach.
To even things out, I like to think about it like this: He may be the boss, but she clearly rules.
